City College of S.F. awaits its fate

Updated 8:09 pm, Friday, March 15, 2013

Samuel Rangel a student at City College of San Francisco yells at motorist to honk in support of the college.

Samuel Rangel a student at City College of San Francisco yells at motorist to honk in support of the college.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

City College of S.F. awaits its fate

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Pay cuts, management changes and better data collection are all on the improvement list turned in by City College. But it's only partial, and may not be enough to stave off a loss of accreditation or closure threatened by an impatient oversight panel.

It will likely be this summer when the outside agency makes its ruling on whether the state's largest community college has fixed 14 management and financial problems cited in a bombshell report last July.

There's no underselling the seriousness of the charges - and the impact that a hobbled or shuttered City College would have on San Francisco. For years, the college doled out generous pay and benefit packages and expanded across the city, opening 11 campuses and renting classrooms in nearly every neighborhood.

Warnings from the state review agency, dating back six years, went largely unheeded until the hammer fell last year. Serious surgery would be needed to prevent a loss of academic accreditation or the nuclear option of closure, the agency decreed.

It's up to the oversight agency to see whether the repair measures taken so far are enough. As of Friday, City College officials turned in their fix-it list, which only partially answers the criticisms. Labor issues beyond a 9 percent wage cut are unsettled. Some department heads, told to return to teaching duties, have balked. The costs of running each campus remain unspecified.

Rising above these pointed problems is a larger and more emotional issue: the need for a low-cost higher-ed system that enrolls 84,000 full- and part-time students. City College leaders are clearly hoping that their incomplete efforts won't be judged harshly when the college's popularity is considered.

It's an appealing argument, but it shouldn't be the only measure. City College has spent months taking on its deepest problems and undoing habits that were years in the making. It's up to the state accreditation agency to decide whether that important task of rebuilding the institution was substantially done.

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